Although we had been to DLP countless times, none of us had ever been to Paris itself, criminal as that sounds. So managed to wangle a day off work to coincide with a teacher training day and we had an opportunity to put that right.

We only live 50 minutes or so from the Eurostar in Ashford and Lisa had booked us a B+B in the heart of Paris for the Saturday night, so we left home at 6ish in the morning one cold and drizzly Saturday morning and by 10 am we were stepping off the train in the Gare Du Nord into the scorching heat of the day in Paris.

We had bought our carnet of metro tickets on the train ( a good tip as the queues for the machines were long) and went straight to Montparnasse so Thomas could see his first proper skyscraper ( nothing compared to what he would see in Dubai later in the year but still not bad)

You pay a few euros and go up this and ffrom the top you can see all of Paris and all the sights

The views were amazing and youcould see the whole of Paris from up there, well worth it and not much known about.

From here we caught the metro to Notre Dame and had a look around the astonishing building - we have seen Hunchback millions of times and to see the building now was fantastic as we knew it so well from there - I don't have many good photos if I'm honest as the sunlight was so bright, but if you love the film you will recognise this window

We were all feeeling a bit weary at that point with the heat and the early start so we walked to our B and B ( abouta 10 minute walk), were shown to a lovely little room with 3 very comfty beds and promptly fell asleep for an hour or so :).

All woke feeling refreshed and raring to go , a quick squizz at the map showed that we were onlya 5 minute walk from the Louvre so we headed there